The Nicefication of Eating Meat

[Diana]

I really don't mean to be inflammatory, but...terror...mortal pain

Come on. You are being inflammatory and using dramatics to spice up the argument.

You don't really know these things though do you Diana?
I guess you think it sounds good and may have the effect of unloading a guilt trip on someone.

I see that sort of comment as manipulative.
You are creating strong imagery in order to force your beliefs on others.
Not very Law of One.

My dear Ashim, I am not trying to be melodramatic. I may sometimes come off that way as my own passion spills through for any cruelty on this planet, and would as well if we were talking about so much unneeded starvation on this planet. I am usually pretty Spock-like, so forgive me a little folly where my heart is torn in two.

I have seen animals slaughtered, not on videos because I can't watch them, but I grew up in rural upstate NY and there were farms all around. One of my earliest memories was when I was about 6 years old. There were several adults around, and one was joking about how a chicken will run around with its head cut off. So he grabbed a chicken and brought it over to a chopping block. The chicken knew it was in danger and I knew that as a 6 year old. Perhaps it was me projecting, but Occam's razor would have to conclude that the simpler idea is that the chicken was in instinctual survival mode. The chicken furiously tried to escape and cried out especially when it was being stretched on the block with two men holding it down. They chopped the head off with an axe and let the chicken go. It ran around headless in circles until it dropped. I was frozen in place and horrified while the adults all laughed.

I have also seen cows bellowing and treated miserably, hit on the head with sludge hammers until they finally die. I have seen the little veal calves in tiny pens where they can't move, being force fed and crying, as they are taken from their mothers right away. 

That animals suffer so we humans can consume them is a fact to me. If it isn't to you, well, I can't say what I think is correct is correct for everyone. But honestly, is the suffering not real? Beyond livestock farming, have we not taken away the animals' habitats while spreading ourselves over the globe without thinking what we are doing? I live near a place called Deer Valley, because at one time it was full of deer herds. There are only shopping malls and subdivisions there now. A developer built over the animals' local watering hole (in the desert) down the road from me. No thought to the impact on the wildlife.

If I express my feeling at the plight of animals, it is not to make you or anyone else feel guilty. First of all, I am smart enough to know that that doesn't work anyway. Perhaps it is just that once the door is opened on the subject, my sadness and sometimes anger spill forth. I hope that in this venue, I will be allowed to honestly express what I feel.